Chapter 8: Chapter 8: Remnants of a Last Stand

Nom moved so quick, Nay struggled to keep up with him. He lowered himself to the ground like a snake and slithered ahead, his body hypnotically winding from side to side, propelled by his sheer musculature and his green protuberances which acted like springs and treads, thrusting him ahead like a rocket.

“Nom! Wait!” Nay said. She hurried after him, her breath already ragged. “Jesus Christ.”

She caught up to him at the entrance of what was the spiral shaped chamber on her mini-map. Nom perched there, poised like a hunting dog who had cornered a fox. His body trembled like an antenna, his head looking down at the bottom of a humungous hole bored into the rock. Stone stairs spiraled down the walls.

Nay stood next to him, holding her lichen light, peering into an abyss. In that moment she felt miniscule at the sheer scale of the architecture, an insignificant human who had stumbled onto a wonder of the world. It was like being inside of a massive snail shell and gazing into the depth of its spiraled chambers.

Her mini-map indicated that the Marrow was somewhere down below.

“Well, what do you think?” Nay asked.

“We go down,” Nom said.

“What if it’s a trap?”

“I think it’s something valuable that could help us.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Think about it. We know a Delicacy is a valuable magical resource. Consuming one changed us. Look at your magic words again. What do they say about Marrow?”

“There’s nothing explaining them. Just that I have open slots for Marrow Abilities…”

“That, coupled with how Piero mentioned that this was a valuable enough Marrow to change his life, should tell us everything we need to know. It’s a magical resource.”

“Yeah, but, is it worth endangering our lives for?”

“Anything worth having is going to involve risk. Listen to me. Consuming the Delicacy was the prerequisite you needed to have access to these abilities. Now you just need to find a Marrow to confirm what happens next. But my guess is that it’s going to lead to enhancements for you in some way. Which will give you more tools to survive, which also means you’ll be more effective at helping me stay alive, too.”

“So everything ultimately leads to you in the end, huh? It’s all about you and your well-being?”

“Glad you’re realizing that,” Nom said. “Now, let’s go find that Marrow.”

/////////

It took almost an hour for them to traverse the spiral staircase to get to the bottom. At least Nay thought it took around an hour. Perhaps it took more. It felt like more, but it was hard to be sure because they didn’t really have a way to tell time. Her legs ached, especially the top of her thighs, from keeping her stabilized and balanced as she traveled down the stairs.

The bottom was like being inside a silo, but one curved side had a set of massive iron double doors. They were ajar and Nay felt uneasy about was beyond, lurking in the blue lichen light that fell in angular shafts like moonlight in the area beyond. Her mini-map indicated that the Marrow was in the center of a large, rectangular-shaped zone.

She took a swig of water from their waterskin. She held it out to Nom, offering him some, but he was eager to rush ahead, ignoring the waterskin in front of him. Nay wondered how much water and food he needed, as she noticed she had to eat and drink on a consistent basis but he seemed fine for going longer than a day without nourishment or hydration. Good news for their rations, but she was intrigued by the metabolism of the tentacle.

She followed him through the doors and found that they were in a tomb. Rows of stone coffins filled the area, which was easily the size of a few football fields. There were pillars every thirty yards in every direction, affixed with empty sconces meant for torches. The only light in here was the pale glow from the lichen. It was a giant mausoleum.

But even worse was the mountain of bones on the opposite end. Even from where they stood they could tell what it was. The skulls poking out from the piles of skeletons gave it away.

This is where the citizens of Paleforge had made their last stand against the thing or things that ended them. They had wondered where the people who had occupied the city had gone. This was the answer. It had been an extermination. Nay wondered what possibly could have done this.

Part of her wanted to turn around and flee this place. Death had been here to collect souls and now only the skeletons remained. But another part of her was filled with morbid curiosity. Not only did she want to locate the Marrow, she wanted to investigate the tragedy of Paleforge.

“Why did they decide to make their last stand in their cemetery?” Nay asked.

“Maybe it was the best defendable place for them. By coming down here, they forced their attackers into a bottle neck down the pit. Then they would have to funnel through those double-doors. They could bunker here and slaughter their attackers until they were overwhelmed.”

“Yes, but that’s not exactly it.”

Nom thought for a minute, but didn’t add anything.

“This is where the women and children and probably all those not fit for battle hid. The men tried to defend the city and this place from their attackers. They only retreated here as a last resort.”

Nom nodded. “I wonder why they didn’t give themselves a defendable place with an escape route, though.”

“That’s easy. Escape wasn’t an option for them. The maugrim weren’t cowards. This was their home. They would defend it until death.”

Nom grew quiet at the somber thought.

They continued forward, the blinking green dot on Nay’s mini-map growing closer.

“Whatever did this is long gone,” Nom said.

“How do you know?” Nay said.

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“Because I have the feeling we would already be part of that pile if they weren’t.”

Nay referenced her mini-map and noticed something odd. “The Marrow is somewhere in that mountain of skeletons.”

“I know but I didn’t want to be the first to break that news. I was hoping my instincts would be wrong.”

/////////

The next disturbing clue greeted them as they realized something had constructed an entrance into the mountain of maugrim bones. The archway of skulls was held together by some type of congealed jelly that had hardened around the skeleton heads like dried mortar the color and translucence of tree sap. It was the entrance of a dark tunnel that led into the funeral mound of bones.

“Didn’t Piero’s journal mention some type of creature…” Nom trailed off, trying to recall the name.

But Nay identified it for him. “He mentioned something he called The Steksis.”

“I think we’re about to find out whatever that is.”

The bones of the maugrim towered over them, a grim warning.

Nay stood in front of the tunnel, the eyeless sockets staring back at her. It felt like the darkness within those sockets were staring holes into her soul. It smelled of must and mold.

Nay shouted into the tunnel. “Hello?”

“What are you doing?” Nom hissed.

“Whatever might be in there, I’d rather face it out here.”

But there was no answer.

Nay drew her dagger from its leather sheath. It wasn’t the gun she’d rather have, but it was better than nothing. “Let’s get this over with.”

She walked into the mountain of bones.

She held the lichen light in front of her, the dagger in her other hand. Sweat beaded on her skin. She observed the tunnel. More skulls looked out at them from the walls and the ceiling, held together by the strange jellied substance serving as mortar.

Nom stayed not behind her, but at her side. Whatever they faced, they would face it head-on together.

Soon, the entrance behind them was no longer visible, and the deeper in they went, the closer they got to the green dot on her mini-map. After a few minutes, the tunnel opened up into a chamber.

According to Nay’s mini-map, the Marrow was in here.

The chamber was decorated in strange bone sculpture designs, the skeletons of maugrim fashioned into bizarre calcium mega-centipedes. They curled around the chamber and arched into the air, giving it the appearance of some sort of grotesque art installation designed by some goth-obsessed artist.

There was a table constructed from bones in the center of the room, but there was something else here in the dark.

A pair of yellow orbs burned in the darkness here. Then the sound of something sniffing, as if nostrils were flaring to take in a scent.

The voice was inhuman and wet. “I smell soft tissue.”

The yellow orbs rotated, facing them, and a bone-white smile formed in the air above, revealing sharp ivory teeth. It seemed like an upside-down face, but Nay couldn’t really scry the shape in the dark. They could only see the eyes and the teeth glowing in the dark.

“It has been too long since I have nibbled on flesh.”

The rest of the Steksis descended from a hole in the ceiling, revealing an iridescent carapace. The rest of its body was in the bones above them, coiled in the network of tunnels it had fashioned in the remains. Its head hanging down into the room like a sleeping bat. The body that emerged was long, like a giant millipede scrabbling into the chamber, so long its body coiled around the circumference of the ceiling. That heeby-jeeby feeling that arises when one sees a spider or an insect, something that dwells in the dark with multiple legs with flagellating antenna and pincers and alien eyes, that primordial instinct that prickles the skin behind the neck, behind the knees, that transforms forearms into gooseflesh, that physical warning that tells a human to either take care or run, well, it hit Nay in full force.

“That many legs on a creature is never a good thing,” Nom said, already squirming deeper into the tunnel they were in. “I once knew an acolyte of the Dread One Exterphaganmodius, known for their multitude of legs. The stories he told me about his master were scandalous to say the least.”

“Nom, now is not the time,” Nay hissed. She backed deeper into the tunnel as well, white-knuckling her dagger. She had doubts if the dagger would be even useful against this thing. As she took another step back, she met resistance against the back of her leg.

There was something behind them.

She looked behind her and down to see part of the thing’s long body was blocking their exit. It slid from one wall into the next, parting the bones, as its body coiled around the chamber like a giant serpent.

Those yellow eyes appeared in front of them and the upper half of its body, its torso, rose before them in the chamber outside the tunnel. The iridescent carapace looked like it was fashioned from the armor of thousands of beetles. The scale-like segments fluttered like wings, revealing a pale and long and withered humanoid form within. It wore the carapace like a suit of armor.

Its face pushed into the lichen light as it revealed its visage. To Nay’s surprise, despite its glowing yellow eyes and needle-sharp teeth, it had the head and face of an old human woman. Strings of unwashed gray hair hung in front of its face. The skin was wrinkled, but it was also translucent, which created the odd effect of seeing glowing eyes and teeth hanging in the air. Was this another perversion of the human form, meant to frighten her and make a mockery of her kind? Or was this someone who was once human who had transformed into a monster?

“Trying to leave so soon?” it said. “We haven’t even had time for introductions.”

As it cackled like a crone, the carapace around its torso opened like an iron maiden, and a human arm emerged, flicking out and slapping the lichen torch out of Nay’s hands, casting them all in darkness.

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